A right-winger attacks global warming (Left-winger attacks right-winger who attacked global warming)

Pittsburgh live ^ | 1/2/05 | Wayne Madsen

[Straight Vermonter]

Michael Crichton's new novel, "State of Fear," not only unfairly bashes the global environmental movement but represents yet another example of how multinational corporations and their political allies are invading the popular culture to advance fanatic and lunatic right-wing ideas and agendas.

The book demonizes scientists who argue that the world is heading toward cataclysmic weather change unless something is done about the spewing forth of greenhouse gases into Earth's atmosphere.

Crichton develops a story line that has environmentalists and scientists creating weather-making doomsday machines that wreak havoc on the planet.

Killer hurricanes, towering tidal waves and destructive lightning storms are all meant to prove the scientists' point about the deadly effects of global warming. The environmentalists are the villains. The corporate shills who have been paid big bucks to debunk the global warming community are the good guys. According to Crichton, global warming is a myth.

In today's world of increasing corporate control of almost every facet of our public and private lives, Crichton's screed against the environmental movement should come as no great surprise.

[superskunk]

it just goes to show that reality global warmers are living in requires much more suspension of disbelief that your average sci-fi novel.

Every time I shovel snow I feel like slapping one of these idiots around and asking them, "Where's that global warming you promised me!"

[Straight Vermonter]

This is the kind of hard science the columnist is talking about:

Study Claiming Rapid Arctic Ice Melt Refuted at Climate Summit
By Marc Morano
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
December 14, 2004

Buenos Aires, Argentina (CNSNews.com) - A researcher who predicts a rapid melt in the Arctic region presented his findings to participants at the United Nations climate change conference here on Monday, but many conference participants questioned the validity of the science used in the study.

Robert Corell, the chair of the international Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA), summed up the findings of his group's report, saying, "We are now experiencing some very rapid and severe climate change in the Arctic."

The study, entitled "Impacts of a Warming Arctic," concludes that climate change will accelerate over the next 100 years, "contributing to major physical, ecological, social and economic changes," Corell said during his presentation to a packed conference room at the meeting.

Corell warned that the rise in sea levels from the projected melting of Greenland's ice shelf could have major impacts on coastal areas worldwide.

But Myron Ebell of the free market environmental group Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) refuted Corell and his international commission's report on Arctic melting.

"The temperature graph [of the Arctic used in the ACIA study] does not agree with any of the known [temperature] data sets for the Arctic. In other words, who knows where they got this data from," Ebell told CNSNews.com.

[Publius6961]

If you claim nothing is going on, it looks like your head is in the sand and you are as bad as the sky is falling people.

No one to my knowledge, who has a decent education and an awareness of science, has ever claimed "nothing is going on".
In fact "nothing going on" is pretty much a description of a dead planet.

The earth is a dynamic system. What is remarkable is that so many "scientists" wander beyond their field of expertise and make jackasses of themselves; exactly as the ignorant, uneducated buffoon does. No more and no less.

Of course something is going on. A brief glance at reconstructed temperatures over the last 400,000 years of geologic history makes it a joke for anyone to claim that he knows with any certainty whatsoever where in the infinite ups and down of temperature fluctuations we happen to be, and what the causes are.
Short term simplistic laboratory experiments and mathematical models can't possible track a system as vast and complex as planetary climate.

It is senseless to "plan" based on uninformed speculation.

[superskunk]

Good read! Thanks for posting that. For the sake of argument, let's say that everything this crackpot suggested is true (which it is clearly not). If all of this were true, that still wouldn't prove this ridiculous "greenhouse gas" theory. Let's take it even further - suppose the greenhouse gas theory is true. The world's industry combined only produces a fraction of the CO2 that the oceans do. So by this reasoning, the biggest environmental offender is the oceans. We should therefore poison those evil oceans and destroy all the life that supports them.

Forgive the rant, but the bottom line is no matter how you slice it, they're wrong. It's rare that even the stupidest people paint themselves into a corner like that. Scientists my a$$!

[shibumi]

Wayne Madsen appears, after reading his article, to have a serious jealousy problem with Michael Crichton. After all, here he is, doing a "Guest Columnist" piece for a newspaper in a second tier market, while his subject is writing prophetic novels, directing and producing movies, has the hit series ER under his belt (along with his two degrees from Harvard) and is doing quite well, thank you.

I suspect his venom toward Murdoch stems from not being able to be in Murdoch's employ. Shills usually do so for financial gain. I wonder if Madsen is looking for employment with one of the MSM outlets, or maybe Air America.

[shibumi]

"If you claim nothing is going on, it looks like your head is in the sand and you are as bad as the sky is falling people."

The thrust of your comment seems more concerned with what things look like more than the reality of the situation. People who accuse others of having their heads in the sand frequently have theirs in a much darker place.

[superskunk]

Good analysis. Should've figured that one out myself. If it isn't leftist ideology, then it must be either money or professional envy.

He's an annoying little man, but I hope he sets his sights a little higher than Air America. They are still on the air in some areas, aren't they?

[shibumi]

"He's an annoying little man, but I hope he sets his sights a little higher than Air America. They are still on the air in some areas, aren't they?"

I live in a highly industrial area, so sometimes it is difficult for me to distinguish the smells emanating from the factories and sewage treatment plants from those smells prevalent when Air America is "on the air".

[shibumi]

"And I suppose "The Day After Tomorrow" is based on sound science."

Actually, it is based on the synthesized, scientifically empathetic and prophetic visions of Art Bell and Whitley Strieber. (There was a leak in their tin-foil hats when they wrote it.)

[ancient_geezer]

As long as the truth you are purporting is that although the climate is changing, for which there is ample evidence, humans are not the cause.

If you claim nothing is going on, it looks like your head is in the sand and you are as bad as the sky is falling people.

 

Climate always changes the direction and how much just depends on your time frame and is independant of human activity:

 

Ice Ages & Astronomical Causes
Brief Introduction to the History of Climate
by Richard A. Muller

Origin of the 100 kyr Glacial Cycle

Figure 1-1 Global warming source NOAA

 

Figure 1-2 Climate of the last 2400 years, source "GISP2"

 

 

Figure 1-3 Climate of the last 12,000 years, source "GISP2"

Figure 1-4 Climate of the last 100,000 years, source Greenland ice data

 

Figure 1-5 Climate for the last 420 kyr, from Vostok ice data

 

http://newton.ex.ac.uk/aip/physnews.252.html#1

INTERPLANETARY DUST PARTICLES (IDPs) are deposited on the Earth at the rate of about 10,000 tons per year. Does this have any effect on climate? Scientists at Caltech have found that ancient samples of helium-3 (coming mostly from IDPs) in oceanic sediments exhibit a 100,000-year periodicity. The researchers assert that their data, taken along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, support a recently enunciated idea that Earth's orbital inclination varies with a 100-kyr period; this notion in turn had been broached as an explanation for a similar periodicity in the succession of ice ages. (K.A. Farley and D.B. Patterson, Nature, 7 December 1995.)
Farley & Patterson 1998, http://www.elsevier.com/gej-ng/10/20/36/33/37/32/abstract.html
Farley http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~farley/
Farley http://www.elsevier.nl/gej-ng/10/18/23/54/21/49/abstract.html

 

http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/pr96/dec96/noaa96-78.html

ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE DURING LAST GLACIAL PERIOD COULD BE TIED TO DUST-INDUCED REGIONAL WARMING

Preliminary new evidence suggests that periodic increases in atmospheric dust concentrations during the glacial periods of the last 100,000 years may have resulted in significant regional warming, and that this warming may have triggered the abrupt climatic changes observed in paleoclimate records, according to a scientist at the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Current scientific thinking is that the dust concentrations contributed to global cooling.

 

Here Comes the Sun

"Carbon dioxide, the main culprit in the alleged greenhouse-gas warming, is not a "driver" of climate change at all. Indeed, in earlier research Jan Veizer, of the University of Ottawa and one of the co-authors of the GSA Today article, established that rather than forcing climate change, CO2 levels actually lag behind climatic temperatures, suggesting that global warming may cause carbon dioxide rather than the other way around."

***

"Veizer and Shaviv's greatest contribution is their time scale. They have examined the relationship of cosmic rays, solar activity and CO2, and climate change going back through thousands of major and minor coolings and warmings. They found a strong -- very strong -- correlation between cosmic rays, solar activity and climate change, but almost none between carbon dioxide and global temperature increases."

[Straight Vermonter]

Lies, damn lies and statistics. Just goes to show it is all in how you present the evidence. Thanks for posting that.

[APFel]

Crichton is no different than crossword puzzle editors who are now paid to include as answers to their clues the names of corporations and brand names as a form of subtle advertising -- a new low in the newspaper business.

Yes. Product names in crossword puzzles signals the end of modern day print journalism as we know it.

Someone put the coocoo back in this guy's clock. It is obviously running up and down his keyboard while his word processor is loaded.

APf

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!

[OldFriend]

The Art Bell who prostituted himself during the Y2K non event?

That Art Bell??????? LOLOL.....credible, NOT

[muir_redwoods]

For the sake of arguement, I will accept that the earth is warmer now that at anytime since 1500. If that is so, what made it so warm in 1500 and why is it not reasonable to assume that the forces at work 500 years ago are not now the forces at work warming the earth today? Why must it be blamed on industry and, in particular, the West?

[DugwayDuke]

"Why must it be blamed on industry and, in particular, the West?"

Simply because it is a convienient scam to transfer wealth from the US to the 3rd world. The ulitmate objective works like this. You take the worlds production of CO2 and divide by the worlds population to get a per capita value. Then you assign carbon quotas to each nation. Obviously, the US will produce more CO2 than it's quota while 3rd world nations will produce less. Under this system the US can 'buy' unused carbon quotas from the 3rd world. IOW, if you want to heat your home you pay a tax to the 3rd world.

[lepton]

bookmark bump

[LS]

It's great. Almost through it, and boy, does he know the science.